Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!husc6!panda!genrad!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!cxsea!blm From: blm@cxsea.UUCP Newsgroups: net.emacs Subject: Re: Question of curiosity: who is still buying Unipress or CCA? Message-ID: <935@cxsea.UUCP> Date: Sun, 5-Oct-86 14:18:35 EDT Article-I.D.: cxsea.935 Posted: Sun Oct 5 14:18:35 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 8-Oct-86 08:00:37 EDT References: <5205@cbrma.UUCP> Reply-To: blm@cxsea.UUCP (Brian Matthews) Organization: Computer X Inc. Lines: 50 In article <5205@cbrma.UUCP> karl@cbrma.UUCP (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: |Is anyone still shelling out real $$$ to buy either Unipress' or CCA's |emacs programs? If so, why? Offhand, I can think of only 2 reasons |why I would do so myself: [1] If I were using a machine with a small |address space incapable of coping with the huge amount of storage |required by GNU Emacs, then I'd want someone else's. [2] If I wanted |a blindingly fast emacs, then I'd drop GNU Emacs, but I'd pick up |microEmacs or somesuch thing, not getting Unipress or CCA even then. Yes, we're still using Unipress Emacs, for a number of reasons (in no particular order): 1. GNU Emacs is HUGE. We're running on small machines with relatively slow disks and small amounts of memory. Even Unipress Emacs is getting a little large. 2. We're running on System V, so no paging (until Release 3, I guess). 3. Unipress supports asynchronous processes on System V. I have no idea if GNU does or not, but I know Unipress does. 4. Unipress is well supported. There's someone I can call, or send mail to, who is running the same version Emacs I'm running, and can reproduce my problems. I don't have time to do a lot of my own support. As far as I know, there's no one who's sole job is to support GNU on System V. 5. Inertia. Unipress is the Emacs I've used since I started using Unix, so the key bindings have always been pretty much the same, and mlisp is still the same (of course new functions are being added all the time, but the old functions that I know still work.) 6. Stability. This isn't true so much any more, but when GNU Emacs was first available, it seemed every week there were 500K of diffs for the next version. I don't have access to Arpanet, and purchasing a new tape every time a new version became available would have been quite expensive. 7. Unipress Emacs isn't really very expensive. I'll admit none of them are real overriding reasons not to switch (except number 3, if GNU doesn't support asynchronous processes on System V. I've got to have my shell window!), but I haven't seen any real overriding reason to switch either. If I was on a VAX running 4.n, then I'd probably use GNU, but I'm not (not that I don't dream about it :-)). -- Brian L. Matthews Computer X Inc. - a division of Motorola New Enterprises ..{utcsri!utzoo!mnetor, uw-beaver!ssc-vax}!cxsea!blm +1 206 251 6811